operationalizing experience: donor approaches to service delivery in fragile states

7/27/2019 Operationalizing Experience: Donor Approaches to Service Delivery in Fragile States

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Operationalizing Experience:Donor Approaches to Service Delivery in Fragile States

Alisa DiCaprio

No. 339 | February 2013

ADB EconomicsWorking Paper Series


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Office of Regional Economic Integration,Asian Development Bank.

Research for this working paper was undertakenwhile the author was at the United NationsUniversity World Institute for DevelopmentEconomics Research
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CONTENTS

ABSTRACT v

I. INTRODUCTION 1

II. OVERVIEW OF FRAGILE STATES 2

A. Why Engage Fragile States Differently? 3B. Fragile States Typology 4C. Assistance Profile of Fragile States 5

III. THE MECHANICS OF ASSESSING DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE 6

A. Different Approaches to Evaluation 7B. Challenges in the Evaluation Process 8

IV. SOME COMMON DESIGN CHALLENGES AND THEIR SOLUTIONS 9

A. Incorporating Local Context 9B. Coordination of Multiple Donors 11C. Building in Flexibility and Adaptability 11D. Combining State-Building Activities with Community Empowerment 12

V. SECTOR-SPECIFIC TRENDS IN SERVICE DELIVERY 13

A. Healthcare 13B. Water and Sanitation 16

C. Education 18D. Security and Justice 21

VI. CONCLUSIONS 24

APPENDIX A: EVALUATION REPORTS INCLUDED 25

APPENDIX B: SAMPLE LISTS OF FRAGILE STATES 26

REFERENCES 27


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ABSTRACT

This study explores the different approaches to service delivery in fragile statesby surveying donors' own evaluations of their existing fragile states policies.

Because there is limited understanding of what works in risky environments,monitoring and evaluation are critical components of effective assistance. Byhighlighting trends in the strategies that donors have developed to implementacknowledged good practices, we can better understand how these experiencesmight contribute to future project and evaluation design.

Key words: fragile states, donor policy, foreign aid, healthcare, water andsanitation, security and justice, education

JEL Codes: O19, 022, H41, H84, I38


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I. INTRODUCTION

In January 2010, Haiti was hit by a powerful earthquake that caused massive devastation toboth physical and human infrastructure. The country had long been in persistent humanitariancrisis, and had required numerous United Nations (UN) interventions over the previous

2 decades to restore core services and security. The media called the earthquake anopportunity to rebuild the country from scratcha long term project. But an approachinghurricane season and the images produced of people trapped and starving demandedimmediate assistance. A year on, evaluations showed that in the rush to deliver humanitarianassistance, implemented projects bypassed civil society and local government. This resulted inweak domestic ownership and social tensions which threatened the viability of projects whendonors attempted to turn them over to local staff (Tulane University 2011).

The post-earthquake situation in Haiti illustrates the larger problem of engagement withfragile states. Development assistance must balance the tension between the urgent need toreach a crisis-affected population with the longer term goal of building state capacity to meetthose needs in the future.

The inability to provide basic services to the population is both a defining characteristicand an outcome of fragility. It is also an area where fragile states have moved so far off-trackthat there is little hope that they will achieve any of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).1

And in regions such as the Sub-Saharan Africa, the recent food and financial crises haveexacerbated existing weaknesses and are likely to slow poverty reduction (EC 2010). Byassisting in service delivery, donors can simultaneously address humanitarian needs andpromote capacity development. However, interventions need to be carefully considered toaccount for the local context which impacts the effectiveness of delivery channels.

Over the past decade, donors have developed various approaches to streamlineassistance to fragile states, but program evaluations continue to turn up difficulties with project

design and execution. Though a set of principles for engagement has been developed, therecommendations are highly generalized and for many of them, it is unclear how tooperationalize suggestions in practice. 2 Though both country and sector case studies areavailable to guide donors, these are underutilized.3 This problem is compounded by a persistentdisconnect between available academic research and assistance practices (Paris 2011).

This study explores the different approaches to service delivery in fragile states bysurveying donors' own evaluations of their existing fragile states policies. Because there islimited understanding of what works in risky environments, monitoring and evaluation are criticalcomponents of effective assistance. By highlighting trends in the strategies that donors havedeveloped to implement acknowledged good practices,4 we can better understand how theseexperiences might contribute to future project and evaluation design.

1As of 2011, fragile states as a group have not achieved a single MDG (OECD 2011).

2OECD principles are drawn from the experiences of its members. In part then, any strategies that adhere to theseguidelines are endogenous.

3The need for political economy analysis is not just at the beginning of engagement in a fragile state. It occursanytime there is a change in programming. When DFID attempted a significant scaling up of their engagement inYemen, resulting changes in the political economy dynamics were not taken into account and subsequently led toimplementation problems (Bennet et al. 2010).

4OECD principles are drawn from the experiences of its members. In part then, any strategies that adhere to theseguidelines are endogenous.


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2 ADBEconomics Working Paper Series No. 339

The aim of this study is to understand what types of engagement have resulted insuccessful service delivery and to what extent this can be expected to promote economicdevelopment more broadly. To answer these questions, we supplement our survey of donors'evaluations with recent academic literature on fragile states.5 By drawing on both quantitativeand qualitative studies from a variety of disciplines, we create a systematic overview of the

current state of knowledge.

Section I introduces the concept of state fragility. States in this category are distinct fromother developing countries both in terms of country-specific indicators and also in terms of theiraid profiles. The typology offered here previews the variety of challenges that donors face intailoring an engagement strategy which is appropriate for all beneficiary countries.

Despite the challenges, as of 2011, many major donors have articulated specificassistance strategies towards fragile states. Section II looks into the mechanics of assessingdevelopment assistance. This section details the differences in methodologies employed bydifferent agencies in our sample. It also highlights the unique challenges that donors haveidentified in their efforts to undertake monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in fragile situations.

Sections III and IV evaluate trends in service delivery from two different perspectives.Section III takes four of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)principles of engagement that were consistently cited as problematic to operationalize anddescribes both the dimensions of the challenges and how specific donors have addressed them.Section IV looks into trends that are specific to four of the main service sectors includinghealthcare, water and sanitation, education, and security and justice. This approach allows us toexplore program innovations that have occurred across countries in each of these sectors.Section five concludes.

II. OVERVIEW OF FRAGILE STATES

Fragile statehood is a concept that distinguishes a subgroup of low-income countries both interms of characteristics specific to the state, and features of the assistance that they receivefrom the international community. Though the international community has articulated a set ofgeneral principles for engagement with this group of states, there is not yet a universallyaccepted approach, terminology or set of indicators that can identify when a state should beincluded in this group.

Part of the difficulty in producing a typology of states in this cohort lies in the recentemergence of the term. While it has long been clear that certain states require different types ofinterventions, until a decade ago there was no common identifier. This led donors to define theirown categories such as weak states, low income countries under stress, and post-conflict

states.

The inability to produce a common typology of states has limited the development ofgroup-specific modalities specific to engagement with fragile states. By comparison, universalagreement about the list of least developed countries (LDCs) based on transparent (though notuncontested) indicators, has enabled the international community to develop a unique set ofmodalities specifically suited for countries on this list. Like LDCs, it is clear that fragile statesneed to be engaged differently in order to account for the specific challenges they face.

5We restrict the literature survey to works published since 2005.


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Operationalizing Experience: Donor Approaches to Service Delivery in Fragile States 3

In this section, we will highlight some of the most common characteristics of fragilestates. But first we briefly turn to the question of what the international community expects toaccomplish through a differentiated development approach to fragile states.

A. Why Engage Fragile States Differently?

Fragile states present a number of new challenges to existing rules of engagement withdeveloping countries. In many cases, donors are entering into situations where their institutionalrisk assessments would have kept them out. Once they are engaged, there is a high potentialfor disruption and discontinuity of progress, which renders existing benchmarks inapplicable.

For this reason, the OECD has produced guidelines for donors that are involved in fragilestates (Figure 1). Yet these suggestions are operationally vague and it is not clear how to putmany of them into practice.

Figure 1: 2007 Policy Commitment and Set of Principles for Good International

Engagement in Fragile States and Situations (OECD)

Take context as the starting point Ensure all activities do no harm Focus on state-building as the central objective Prioritise prevention Recognise the links between, political, security and development objectives Promote non discrimination as a basis for inclusive and stable societies Align with local priorities in different ways in different contexts Agree on practical co-ordination mechanisms between international actors Act fastbut stay engaged long enough to give success a chance Avoid pockets of exclusion (aid orphans)

The assumption inherent in these principles is that even in the most problematicsituations, economic development is possible and that donor assistance can be designed in away that goes beyond emergency assistance.

The international community has sought to engage differently with fragile states for bothhumanitarian and national interest reasons. Developmental concerns prompted many donors toadjust their aid strategies to account for the additional challenges they found in certain types ofstates. As the World Bank pointed out, extreme poverty rates, though they have decreased innon-fragile states over the past 15 years, have remained unchanged in fragile states (IDA,2007).

While the specific state types included in fragile situations differ by donor, what is

common is an understanding that these states required more frequent humanitarian assistanceand more hands-on assistance as a result of weak government capacity. This is particularlyimportant in the global push to achieve the MDGs. Though fragile countries have madeprogress (Harttgen and Klasen 2012) they will not meet any of the MDGs. ADB (2010) pointsout that existing approaches do not work in situations of low capacity and fluid politicalconditions.

Figure 2 illustrates the difficulty fragile states are having in meeting the MDGs. As thereare more frequent and prolonged global crises, we might expect that more states will move intothis category which makes understanding how to engage them highly relevant.


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Figure 2: Fragile States will not meet MDGs

MDG = Millennium Development Goal.

Source: Global Monitoring Report, 2010 (figure 1.14, p. 23).

In addition to the potential for destabilization of the state itself, fragile states often haveregional and global spillover effects. They can be a source of instability for their neighbors byfomenting conflict, sending refugees, and destroying shared natural resources. In 2011, Kenyareceived more than 380,000 Somali refugees who were fleeing from the worst drought in60 years. And even though the United Nations had paid for new camps, the Kenyan government

prevented them from opening out of fear that once the refugees enter Kenya, they will not leave(Gettleman 2011). The World Bank estimates that states that border fragile states lose anaverage of more than 1.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) each year (World Bank 2007).

Globally, the use of national interest as a reason for engagement with fragile states hasbecome prominent since the rise of massive acts of international terrorism facilitated by somefragile states. The instability of these states has led to their use as a haven for terrorists, pirates,and other groups that thrive in unstable environments. Subsequently some donor countrieshave raised their engagement efforts to the level of a national security target.

B. Fragile States Typology

Fragile states are those in which the government is unable or unwilling to deliver core functionsto its people (DFID 2005). As Pritchett and de Weijer (2010) point out, the state apparatus infragile situations may be able to create the institutions of a state, but it may not be able to carryout the functions of those institutions. While the roots of fragility cross the spectrum frompersistent domestic conflict to vulnerability to exogenous shocks, the binding constraint is theinability of the state to absorb, deter and/or recover from shocks.

There are a number of structural and governance challenges that are common in fragile states.In addition, states often display weak performance over multiple, but not all measures. Fragilestates are most often identified using measures of governance and administrative capacity, and

0

20

40

60

80

100

MDG 1a -

extreme

poverty

MDG 2 -

primary

completion

rate

MDG 3 -

gender parity

(primary and

secondary)

MDG 4 - child

mortality

under five

MDG 7c -

access to safe

water

MDG 7c -

access to

sanitation

ProgresstowardGoaltoD

ate,%

middle-income countries

low-income countries

fragile states


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the potential for instability as measured by the existence or potential for conflict, or susceptibilityto exogenous shocks. States that are defined by these weaknesses often display characteristicssuch as:

Figure 3: Characteristics of Fragility

Structural andEconomic Factors

Political and InstitutionalFactors

SocialFactors

InternationalFactors

Conflict Crisis of state legitimacy Inequality Global shocksNatural resource wealth Political repression Social exclusion Legacy of colonialismExport concentration Weak institutions Sharp social divisions Climate changePoverty Limited public resources Weak civil society

Source: Adapted from Mcloughlin, 2010.

Though not all fragile states are subject to conflict, this is often a key source ofinstability. And once countries experience conflict, over 50% of countries fall back into conflict

within 5 years (World Bank 2007).

In the absence of an accepted set of diagnostic tools, many donors have adopted somelower limit of the World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment to identify fragility.However, a recent study finds that there is little evidence that these scores shape donors country assistance programs, or that its use provides fragile states with any signal to improvetheir performance in these indicators (Sending and Lie 2010).

The international community defines fragile states by characteristics of the domesticenvironment. However, the assistance that goes to fragile states also exhibits uniquecharacteristics that can also contribute to the fragile situations.

C. Assistance Profile of Fragile States

Fragile states are further differentiated from non-fragile situations in terms of the assistance thatthey receive from the international community. The efforts by donors over the past 5 years torestructure their engagement with fragile states come from the recognition that aid flowsthemselves were insufficient, unstable, and poorly targeted. In this section, we highlight some ofthe characteristics of aid flows that contribute to the lack of effective engagement.

The first characteristic of aid flows to fragile states is that, even as the overall volume isincreasing,6 studies find it is lower than would be expected given their need. States receive 43%less aid per capita than would be predicted based on their poverty level, performance, andpopulation (Levin and Dollar 2005).

Of the aid that reaches fragile states, it is highly concentrated in only a few beneficiaries.In 2006, 75% of ODA for the 38 fragile states in the OECD list was allocated to five countries Nigeria, Afghanistan, Sudan, DR Congo, and Cameroon (OECD 2007).

While most donors agree that more assistance should go to fragile states, this imbalanceamong states suggests that more specific criteria would be needed in order to equitably enact

6OECD (2010) shows that in 2009, official development assistance to fragile states increased by 11% year-on-year.DFID for example doubled spending on fragile states over the last 5 years.


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such a plan. Absorptive capacity also varies greatly, so simply increasing the volume of aid mayincrease rather than decrease existing imbalances.

Assistance to fragile states is also more volatile and unpredictable than in otherdeveloping countries. McGillivray (2008) points out that aid flows to fragile states are twice as

volatile as those to other low income countries. While volatility has negative impacts in allsituations (see e.g., Kharas 2008) it is most pronounced for fragile states where programs areoften wholly dependent on donor assistance and may cease to function in the absence of aid.The volatility comes in part from lack of internal coordination within donor organizations.

Price instability and cost escalation are more common in some fragile states and cansignificantly increase the costs of a project where, as Department for International Developmentof the United Kingdom (DFID) points out, operations are already more expensive and laborintensive than elsewhere. Citing the cases of Nepal and Tuvalu, ADB (2010) notes that projectscan suddenly exceed available resources because of security concerns, transportation costs,rising costs of materials from a building boom in neighboring countries, and the devaluation ofthe US dollar.

Aid also tends to be temporally concentrated in a way that limits its effectiveness.Disbursements are highest directly after a conflict or other shock which is exactly when thegovernment is least able to absorb it (Collier 2007). But later, once the bureaucracy can refocus,the aid levels have already fallen. There is also a fundamental tension between the need torespond quickly and the time needed to design project properly. ADB (2010) noted that in manycases when designs were fast-tracked for quick response, implementation was weak andinstitutionally-required assessments were not followed.

Another characteristic of foreign assistance in fragile states is that there is a much largerfocus on humanitarian assistance rather than development assistance. DFID (2009) finds thathumanitarian assistance (largely disaster relief) takes up almost 30% of its expenditure in fragile

states and only 5% in non-fragile lending. The reason for concern is that humanitarian aid isshort-term and intended to respond to an emergency which therefore largely bypasses thestate. Development aid is longer term. OECD (2010) suggests that this imbalance existsbecause humanitarian aid is more flexible, but that in using a short term instrument to addresslonger term problems, this may be inappropriate.

III. THE MECHANICS OF ASSESSING DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE

The tendency of conditions in fragile states to shift rapidly means that assistance is oftendesigned with limited information about what works and what is needed. This goes for bothhumanitarian and development assistance. The deadly December 2004 tsunami in Asia affected

coastal regions that had little experience with large-scale disaster and forced donors toreassess and adjust their hazard mitigation and emergency preparedness measures (Steckleyand Doberstein 2011).

It is clear that M&E of aid projects can produce valuable information which can then beused to improve performance of future projects. In practice however, problems with dataavailability and dangerous conditions in some areas can pose constraints to evaluation in somestates and regions.


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One outcome of such limitations is that even strategic aid may not be used effectively.For example, a study of United States (US) assistance in Pakistan points out that assistance isgiven for highly strategic reasons, and yet, there is almost no analysis of its effectiveness(Wilder 2010). Looking historically at episodes of stabilization, Barakat, Deely, and Zyck (2010)show that this leads to a situation where today's interventions build on and repeat the mistakes

of the past.

A. Different Approaches to Evaluation

Attempts to create a unified approach to assistance in fragile states have occurred only withinthe past decade, and mostly within the past five years. Before the term fragile states enteredinto the popular lexicon, donors maintained a variety of approaches to weak or conflict-affectedcountries. And some donors do not yet have any differentiated policy towards fragile states(such as Sida for example). The legacy is that even today objectives for engagement with fragilestates are donor-specificUnited States Agency for International Development (USAID)focuses on security for example, while DFID has a greater emphasis on state building (seefigure below). These differing objectives are linked to different perceptions of when a project can

be considered to be a success and contribute to the inability to aggregate trends amongdonors.

Figure 4: Objectives of Donors Fragile States Policies

ADB World Bank OECD AfDB DFID AusAID USAID

Objective forengagement

Improve aideffectiveness

Statebuilding

Peacebuilding

Capacity dev.

Statebuilding Statebuilding

Peacebuilding

Statebuilding

Peacebuilding

Economicdevelopment

Enhance aideffectiveness

Dev outcomesUS Security

Yearrecognized

2007 2002 2005 2008 2005 2005 2006

AfDB =African Development Bank, AusAID = Australian Agency for International Development, DFID = Department for InternationalDevelopment of the United Kingdom, OECD = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, USAID = United StatesAgency for International Development.

Source: Adapted from ADB 2010.

In this study, we review a number of donor evaluations in order to create a picture of thecommon and unique methods that have been used to assess existing assistance (see appendix

A for the full list). While the objectives against which each donor was evaluating successdiffered in each case, there were enough commonalities to distill four sources of variationamong donors in their methods of evaluationfrequency of assessment, sample size, coverageperiod, and the objective on which the project is being evaluated.

The frequency with which organizational policies governing their aid to fragile states arereviewed is, for most donors, not yet settled. As the Figure 4 illustrates, specific aid frameworksdesigned for fragile states are relatively recent for most donors. Yet some, such as DFID (eachyear evaluates the implementation of their organizational policy governing aid to fragile states ina selected sample of countries) have been considerably more active than others such as ADB(only intermittently conducts single country evaluations). As mentioned earlier, constantengagement is important in situations where conditions may change quickly. There is nodiscernable connection between project monitoring and full strategic evaluation.


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Sample is another key variable. Not all institutions are currently engaged with all of thefragile states that they have identified. There were two approaches usedcase studies and fullpopulation coverage. In the case study approach, the evaluator would select a sample of thecovered countries to explore in detail how the institutional strategy has been implemented andwhat lessons can be drawn from the experience. This approach allows for more detailed

assessments, but makes meta-analysis nearly impossible for the full sample group. DFID forexample, samples nine countries a year. OECD samples four. The second approach is for theevaluation to include all fragile states that are engaged by a particular donor. Since a full surveyof all projects in all targeted fragile states is a resource-intensive exercise, this approach isinfrequent or done only once. ADB has used it, but chose their sample by projects rather thancountries. They chose from all countries that had projects in place from 20002006.

A third source of variation is in coverage period of the evaluation. Some evaluatorslooked at the previous year, while others looked at a multi-year time span the longest of whichwas the entire engagement period. DFID has used both types in their four synthesis reportssince 2005. The first two reports looked at a sample of countries over a single year, while thenext two covered the period since the last review. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also

used a multi-year review (20002005) although the justification for that particular timeline wasunclear. The African Development Bank (AfDB) used a single year of data to cover the period inwhich they had a fragile states policy. Germanys Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperationand Development (BMZ) took a historical approach and looked at the historically relevant periodfor the country and type of program under evaluation.

The final source of variation among donors is the indicators on which countries are beingevaluated. Most donors articulated some version of the acknowledgement that a specific policytowards fragile states was put in place too recently for evaluators to see development resultsfrom that specific policy. Public evaluation reports are often not clear on exactly whichobjectives are being sought in different projects. The criteria for ADB include relevance,effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability. BMZ did not offer any specific criteria for evaluation

and concentrated case studies on one sector per country. A report issued in 2009 responded toOECD-DAC criticism that there was no single institutional method of evaluation for anydevelopment projects by reviewing existing programs and offering a plan of action (Borrmannand Stockmann2009).

B. Challenges in the Evaluation Process

One of the results of the multitude of functional and operation objectives is that, as theAustralian Office of Development Effectiveness points out, even though programs are beingdelivered, their actual impact on poverty is unclear (Buhl-Nielson 2009). Yet, without anunderstanding of the ultimate objective being sought by engagement, donors run the risk ofinefficient resource allocation, engagement fatigue, and violating the do not harm principle. In

this context, Lindley-French (cited in Elhawary, Foresti, and Pantuliano 2010) has argued thatdefining success is one of the central components of coordinating agendas. Traditionalassessments of aid effectiveness cannot work in fragile states since, by definition, they do nothave the capacity to use aid effectively.

Another challenge to evaluating the success of different assistance instruments andmodalities comes from the time horizon required in the fragile states case. How long do weneed to wait to see development results? Pritchett, Woolcock, and Andrews (2010) argue thatgiven what we know about successful states such as the Republic of Korea, many fragile states


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would take hundreds of years to reach such development levels. In addition, as de Groot andShortland (2010) remind us, as certain indicators of development improve, they may promoteperverse results, such as the increase in pirates coming from parts of Somalia with better-than-average rule of law. As states move out of fragility, in some areas, this may enable certainnegative activities to begin along with the expected positive growth.

One of the challenges identified by all donors in the evaluation process is the difficulty inmonitoring, either because of incomplete project reporting, lack of data, insecurity, or inability offield offices to adopt the standards expected by headquarters. The reasons for these problemsrange from the lack of staff to overly complex reporting standards. In relation to this, surveyshave found a lingering disconnect between headquarters and field offices. When ADB surveyedstaff offices, evaluators found that 70% of respondents were unaware that a specific approachto fragile states existed. While the approach had been articulated in 2007, 2 years later it stillhas not yet taken root (ADB 2010).

Ideally there would be a unified model of evaluation that would allow for donors tocompare cases. However, in its absence there is still a great deal of information available in

existing reports. The next two sections use these reports to distill the most common challengesdonors face in service delivery and the ways that they have attempted to address them.

IV. SOME COMMON DESIGN CHALLENGES AND THEIR SOLUTIONS

In a whole-of-government approach, state building and service delivery are targetedsimultaneously. Over time, best practices have emerged which are intended to guide the designof projects in a way that promotes both state building and service delivery. Yet while theprinciples are based in practice, they are articulated with a low level of clarity. In this section, welook into those guidelines that were continually cited by donors as most challenging toimplement and present examples of how different donors have addressed them.7

A. Incorporating Local Context

Integrating the context-sensitive analysis into program design is among the most frequentlyarticulated challenges to successful engagement in fragile states. Donors have struggled bothwith supply issues, such as recruitment of expert and local staff; and absorption issues such ashow to integrate the information provided by field offices, and how to adjust projects asconditions change.

The importance of understanding the political economy behind development challengesis an issue that has received increasing profile among development practitioners. Becauseeconomic development is embedded in the social and political context of the country (Rodrik

2010); without an understanding of its dynamics, otherwise well-designed projects may haveadverse and unintended results. Assistance cannot properly target fragility without anunderstating of the drivers and agents of change (Norad 2010).

7These roughly reflect some of the OECD principles, but are drawn from a survey of donors own evaluations and sodo not match exactly.


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To the extent that a country receives assistance from multiple donors, the difficulty ofunderstanding the country context may be, in part, addressed by sharing M&E reports. 8Particularly in heavily-aided countries such as Afghanistan and Uganda, there are multiple casestudies available that highlight what works and what does not work in different sectors of servicedelivery. And given that fragility is a long-term condition, and that states are likely to fall back

into fragility-producing conflict even after it has ended, there is great value to mining pastevaluations for evidence about how the political context was integrated into successful projects.

The fact that evaluations of the same country by different donors often reflect similarproblems suggests that sharing data about what works and what does not work could be ofvalue for future development projects. In part, the difficulty of aggregation is the lack of a singleconceptual framework. Case studies are donor specific and focus on projects, outcomes andconsiderations that are unique to the donor agency.

Ideally, all development projects are designed to meet a clear domestic need, target aspecific population and account for cultural norms and political realities. But as we saw in theHaiti example, the domestic situation may change quickly and the need to act fast may pre-empt

plans to hire experts and plan for sustainable project rollout. This failure to account for localrealities can result in project failure, as BMZ found when some of their services turned out to beculturally unacceptable. The challenge then is both how to find appropriate staff and how totranslate their recommendations into project design.

The first dimension of this challenge is how to gain information about the domesticcontext. M&E reports detail a variety of human resource difficulties. On the most basic level,some donors simply do not have field offices. For the African Development Bank (2010), theynote that currently, only four fragile states have [AfDB] field offices which they tagged as theirgreatest challenge in peace and state building. Other donors cited a lack of human resourcesincluding both experts and skilled locals.

The solutions that donors have used include expanding the network of field offices andhiring booms. Both AfDB and DFID have opened more delegated country offices to promotebetter alignment. DFID for example, doubled the number of its Senior Civil Service led overseasoffices and staff between 1999 and 2009 (Korski 2010). Yet the problem may be morefundamental than simply hiring more staff. ADB (2010) points out that, within their organization,there are no compensatory measures in place to attract staff to work in fragile states. They citethe case of Papua New Guinea (PNG) where an overvalued currency put budgeting pressureson staff and is an obvious disincentive to working there. A DFID study also mentions thatdespite a focus on increasing the number of country offices, there were still some countrieswhere DFID staffing caps were found to be unrealistically low (Chapman and Vaillant 2010).

The second dimension is how to use local information once it is available. Even where

field offices and skilled local staff exist, a DFID study found that locally appointed staff wasunderutilized and not promoted. Another feature of incorporation is how to coordinate andconsult with local actors. Coordination and consultation with the Afghan government were citedas major problems for program outcomes (Chapman and Vaillant 2010).

8The World Bank (IEG 2006) points out that for the case of Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, by using existinganalyses, they were able to save great cost in preparing their own.


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B. Coordination of Multiple Donors

More aid is not necessarily better aid. In 2008, Iraq received its core aid funding from no lessthan 25 different donors (OECD 2010). This presented a weak government with the need toprocess various funds attached to different conditionalities and objectives and with varying

reporting timelines and standards. While this is an extreme case, it highlights one of the ways inwhich donor interventions themselves can be a source of dysfunction and fragility. It also raisesthe possibility that without coordination, particular sectors or countries may be overfunded andthat there may be competing projects. While it is clear that harmonization of donor approacheswould alleviate these problems, the reality is that coordination has been limited.

There are several types of approaches that have risen to prominence to address thisproblem. The most popular are Multi-Donor Trust Funds (MDTF) which pool resources andallow for multi-year commitments. The AfDB (2008) suggests that these are useful particularlywhere the government demonstrates political will, but lacks capacity. Leader and Colenso(2005) seconded this by offering the example of how this instrument enabled the shoring up oflegitimacy of the weak post-Taliban government in Afghanistan. MDTFs have great potential to

reduce transactions costs, increase domestic ownership (Barakat 2009) and mobilize resources(Leader and Colenso 2005).

Yet MDTFs have seen only limited application in practice because of scepticism abouttheir utility in promoting economic development. While DFID has participated in these funds,they have been critical about their impacts, in particular on the ability of the donor to remainflexible in their commitments. In a report for DFID, Chapman and Vaillant (2010, p. 14) point outthat joint funds have often been judged as achieving more in terms of aid effectiveness than indelivering development impact. They also argue that at the country level they are slow to setup, costly to manage andhave achieved modest development impacts. For the case ofSouthern Sudan, both Fenton (2007) and Pantuliano (2009) suggest that the use of joint fundsultimately worked to the detriment of service delivery. In that case, the MDTF was slow to

disburse and inefficient to the point that ultimately, donors simply bypassed the funds andcontinued to disburse bilaterally.

Another solution is strategic partnerships between donors. This is one of the pillars ofADB's approach to fragile states. DFID has had some success especially coordinating with theWorld Bank and USAID. But similar to the case of pooled funding, while collaboration ismentioned by all donors as important, they all also acknowledge the difficulty of implementing itin practice. ADB (2010) points out that while they had limited success in cooperation on countrystrategies, there was no strong evidence of effective joint work among development partners atthe project level. Although, at an individual level, they mentioned that for the case of PNG andthe Solomon Islands, maintaining field offices in the same building as the World Bank hasfacilitated communication and coordination.

C. Building in Flexibility and Adaptability

Fragile states are, by nature, volatile and subject to sudden changes in domestic conditions.This is in part why they fare so poorly in performance-based assessments of interventions.Donors recognize that projects need to incorporate the ability to accommodate and adapt tonew situations. Yet this has proven to be a challenge since projects need to be flexiblethroughout the life of the intervention in order to transform a shock that would normally lead toproject disruption into an opportunity for learning and readjustment.


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One way to account for inevitable changes is to build adjustment into the projecttimeline. ADB (2010) pointed out that adjustments to projects are highly likely during theimplementation phase, which has led to delays and even cancellations. This would beaddressed by sequenced implementation that allows adjustments to project design duringimplementation rather than cancellation. This can account for the anticipated, but unforeseen

difficulties that come from implementing projects in countries with weak institutions and unevencapacities across states.

Another approach is more frequent assessment of projects in order to enable flexibility.The World Bank for example, normally uses 34 year country assistance strategies, but infragile states, 12 year Interim Strategy Notes are used. They are also regularly updatingcountry analysis even in countries in non-accrual which they point out was useful in the case ofCentral African Republic, Haiti, Somalia, and Sudan which repeatedly returned to crisis (WorldBank 2005).

The accommodation of flexibility is particularly important for donors that aim fordevelopment outcomes. The World Bank claims that no country has been able to transform its

institutions in less than a generation and suggesting that reforms take from 15 to 30 years(World Bank 2011). Pritchett and de Weijer (2010) make the point that almost any scenario forfragile states is operating under an overly-optimistic timeline by citing estimates that the UK hada higher GDP per capita in 1500 than Afghanistan had in 2003. Project longevity can beextended in various ways. In a water project in Nepal, ADB allowed for project longevity byintroducing a revolving funding mechanism where funds are re-lent to users which issupplemented by taxes (ADB 2010). This also addressed the issue of sustainable funding oncethe project had been completed as ADB (2010) points out that investments are often eroded bylack of operation and maintenance ex post.

D. Combining State-Building Activities with Community Empowerment

Capacity building in fragile states often incorporates a conceptualization of governance thatgoes beyond government. Donors such as DFID are increasingly reaching out to NGOs andother civil society organizations (CSOs) as a way to build accountability, improve understandingof domestic needs, and increase local ownership to complement their efforts at the centralgovernment level (Warrener and Loehr 2005). As Waldman, Strong, and Wali (2006) points out,governments may be legitimate (or not), but it is civil society that confers legitimacy (or not).Even ADB, which has traditionally engaged largely with sovereign entities, has recognized that itis necessary to engage subnational actors in fragile situations (ADB 2007). These examplessuggest that donors are increasingly seeing engagement with civil society as a usefulcomponent of their engagement with fragile states.

When local communities are not included in the assistance process there are a number

of problems that can arise. Donors may be increasing the capacity of an illegitimate governmentfor example. They may be setting out channels for assistance that are at odds with culturalnorms. They may be ignoring issues that then become intractable problems. In the 2011 WorldDevelopment Report, the World Bank points out that unemployment facilitates recruitment intogangs and militias which perpetuate violence and conflict.

Yet even with the recognition of the need to engage, donors have made only limitedprogress. Chapman and Vaillant (2010) point out that no DFID country office has met itsstrategic targets in supporting the indigenous capacity of civil society organizations. Wennmann


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(2010) suggests that this is because for the most part development aid still treats thegovernment as the primary instrument of governance.

The revealed preference for working with governments appears to be in part becausedonors have difficulty in holding non-state actors to account. DFID in particular noted the lack of

viable partners often limits their success with civil society engagement. Their attempt to supportindigenous CSOs resulted in mixed performance and suggested that the independence of civilsociety from politicization was overestimated (Chapman and Vaillant 2010). This experience isnot atypical, as Batley and Mcloughlin (2010) suggest that it is relatively common for nonstateservice provision to be poorly monitored and poorly undertaken. DFID provided severalexamples where working with other donors and through NGOs could dilute the message andfocus of the funding.

The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) is piloting the use ofchurches in their service delivery efforts in PNG (Clarke, 2011). They introduced this non-traditional delivery system not only because of its ubiquity in the country, but also because of itsclose links to local communities and nongovernment organizations (NGOs). The donor requires

that the churches are linked to local NGOs as a means of providing some distinction betweentheir religious mission and service delivery operations.

This section illustrated the diversity of approaches that donors have taken to meet someof the challenges that were common across sectors and across countries. While the solutionslisted here addressed these issues, they also remind us that little consistent forward movementhas been made in an overall assistance framework for fragile states. The next section highlightssector-specific intervention innovations that have succeeded in incorporating the issues raisedin this section.

V. SECTOR-SPECIFIC TRENDS IN SERVICE DELIVERY

The ways in which service delivery in fragile situations link to economic development outcomesare highly sector specific. This section turns to look at four strategically important sectorshealth; education; water and sanitation; and security and justice. For each, we describe theunique characteristics of engagement, the challenges specific to engagement, trends in policiesor instruments, and finally, how service delivery in that sector is expected to impact long termdevelopment outcomes.

We draw data primarily from donors own evaluation reports of the outcomes of theirinstitutional fragile states policies. As described in Section IIIA, these reports varied in severalparameters and did not always cover all fragile states or all interventions. In order to build acomprehensive picture of assistance to fragile states in specific service delivery sectors, we

therefore supplemented these policy evaluation reports with country case studies done by thesame donors on states they had defined as fragile. A literature review was also conducted oneach sector to determine where innovations had been identified.

A. Healthcare

Health services are one of the most well-funded areas of donor assistance. In part, this isbecause it is one of the least likely among service delivery sectors to become politicised, whichmakes it a widely accepted entry point for donor engagement (BMZ, 2007). It is often prioritizedby states regardless of their stability or other aims. Thus the stakeholders in this sector include


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both the population of the country and the government, as well as non-state service providerssuch as NGOs.

Because it is a fundamental human need, the provision of health services hasconsequences beyond health outcomes. It can reduce conflict and potentially the recidivism of

conflict as the burden of disease is lowered (Collier and Hoeffler 2004). It can also contribute tostate building more generally by providing optimism about the future (Newbrander 2007).

In contrast to other sectors, health has well-established multilateral facilities that are ableto target and disburse billions of dollars of assistance.9 Pooled donor funding facilities are newto other sectors, but in health, The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and theGlobal Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization are just two very well-funded organizations thatcan attract and coordinate support from multiple donors.

1. Challenges

The challenges of service delivery in this sector stem from the complexity of delivery points and

the variety of interventions which range from horizontal (building capacity of service deliverygenerally) to vertical (focusing on a specific disease or problem). In addition, this is a sectorcharacterized by informational challenges where recipients may not be able to judge thecompetence of the care that they receive and where interventions are difficult to monitor (OECD2008).

A problem that is particularly challenging in fragile states is that improvements in healthoutcomes are easily reversed. Health professionals are often in short supply and can be thetarget of violence. And in the absence of qualified staff who can diagnose and providetreatment, gains that had been made up to that point are unlikely to be maintained. This rapidloss of gains is in contrast to other sectors where gains are more sustainable even after a shockto infrastructure, such as in education where once a child learns to read that gain will stay with

them.

Another challenge is the need to decide which services to provide. Each states needswill be different, but the state may not have the capacity to guide donors, particularly in theevent of a humanitarian crisis. NGOs may also not have the purview to provide this guidance. InYemen, DFID attempted to channel support for health services through UN agencies, only tofind that they had poor capacity and had only been substituting for even lower capacity by theMinistry of Public Health Policy (Bennett et al. 2010).

A particularly intractable problem has been the difficulty in linking health outcomes tospecific interventions. This is the result of two related challenges. The first is that many healthoutcomes are often not directly the result of the health infrastructure (nutrition for example) so it

is often unclear whether a particular program should be replicated. As an example, a recentarticle in the New York Times on the health impacts of Sierra Leone's waiving of medical feespresented statistics that appear to show that more of the needy are getting care, while at thesame time quoting researchers who say that they cannot link the elimination of fees to healthoutcomes just yet (Nossiter 2011).

9While pooled fund facilities are present in other areassuch as the United Nations Central Emergency ResponseFund these are not sector-specific.


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A second linking challenge is that in some cases the success of a single instrumentdepends on the presence of other complementary instruments. Because health outcomes areoften the product of a web of interventions rather than a single program, it is important tointerpret health outcomes as a part of a wider set of changes that are occurring in servicedelivery. This also applies to the role of service delivery in capacity building. Eldon, Waddington,

and Hadi (2008) point out that while it has been shown that heath sector interventions increasestate capacity in health, it is unclear if it promotes state building more generally.

2. Trends in Service Delivery

One trend in healthcare delivery is the promotion of a national strategy often called a BasicPackage of Health Services (BPHS). This allows donors to coordinate horizontal and verticalinterventions without necessarily limiting instruments. Where the Ministry of Health is capableand involved, this strategy can both increase capacity at the same time as it provides services.Zivetz (2006) offers Afghanistan and Timor-Leste governments as two examples where this wasthe case. In addition, for the case of the DR Congo, Waldman, Strong, and Wali (2006)suggests that it offered peacebuilding spillovers by bringing different factions together to

construct the strategy.

Contracting out health services beyond the state is also popular in this sector (Palmer etal. 2006). In Afghanistan before 2002, 70% of healthcare was delivered by NGOs, which was astrategy promoted by the World Bank and others in order to deliver care quickly. Waldman,Strong, and Wali (2006) conclude that the BPHS in Afghanistan has enabled the Ministry ofPublic Health to increase its capacity by delegating provider roles to nonstate actors, which hascontributed to the perception that the health sector is among the best performing reconstructionareas in Afghanistan. However, evaluations also warn that this approach should not be done atthe expense of working through the formal state structure if it is available. While healthministries are often relatively weak, The Global Fund disbursed most funds to governmentministries and found that they performed well; although they remarked that this is entirely

unexpected (Nantulya 2005, p. 25).

A related approach is the use of publicprivate partnerships. The DFID-fundedPartnerships for Transforming Health Systems Programme has found success in several statesin Nigeria. According to Green (2008), this is a replicable approach for increasing demand for,and access to, emergency maternal health services within the context of a large-scale healthsystems strengthening program. The underlying assumption of this program is that health ismost effectively provided through publicprivate partnerships. It has the additional componentthat seeks to change behaviors by generating social approval for new behaviours.

Finally, it has been shown that sectoral advisory services are still feasible even underpolitical breakdown. BMZ's experience in Cote D'Ivoire offers evidence that health services can

continue to be delivered even with ongoing political disruptions and civil war. Even as warcaused most foreign workers to depart, the national program continued to provide services,supported by BMZ. In the BMZ example, even though its project staff left the country in 2002,the project continued through foreign coordination, operating in areas where there was lessunrest. Country directors have been seconded to the country. Services include distribution ofcontraceptives, HIV tests, and education of personnel. They also suggest that programs withnarrower technical and sector-specific focus are good entry points. A lesson is to begin withtechnical questions instead of policy (BMZ 2007).


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3. Linking withDevelopmentHealth indicators are closely linked to a countrys growth potential. The channels include bothdirect impacts through productivity and indirect impacts through education. Directly,improvements in health services can improve productivity of workers and reduce the time lost

from illness.

Indirectly, improved maternal health produces healthier babies. And health and nutritionaffects cognitive abilities such that healthy children learn faster and more effectively (Ding et al.2006). In addition, improved child health will have important impacts on future growth as healthychildren become productive adults.

Poor health indicators can result in a poverty trap which is a negative and self-reinforcing situation that enables poverty to persist. In many fragile states, workers areemployed in challenging or labor-intensive jobs where nutrition affects productivity. A healthshock may lead to reduced productivity, which reduces income, which results in reducednutrition, which causes the health shock and reduced productivity to persist. Health

interventions and development assistance can break this cycle.

B. Water and Sanitation

Water is necessary for daily survival and therefore is one of the most important emergencyinterventions of those described in this report. It is always in high demand, and it may be thefirst intervention to be requested by communities (OECD 2006). As a result, where buildinggovernment legitimacy is a concern, service delivery in this sector can make a particularlyvisible and rapid contribution (OECD 2006).

In terms of prioritization, while water is often included on the national agenda, sanitationservices drop off in most cases. This makes the lack of national prioritization one of the biggest

problems in sanitation. The differential attention to these two related areas is also reflected bythe fact that water is one of the few MDGs that is expected to be achieved while sanitation isconsidered to be among the MDGs that are most off-track. An evaluation by AusAid suggeststhat part of the explanation lies in the fact that while the provision of water infrastructure isstraightforward, sanitation systems often need to be accompanied by behavioural changes inorder to achieve results (Buhl-Neilson 2009).

In terms of both needs and access, there is a significant urbanrural divide in both waterand sanitation (WHO 2006). The majority of the population that lacks access to both is in ruralareas. The challenges of service delivery also reflect a dividerural users are dispersed andthe role of community level actors is less; urban users often have access to a utility. In ruralareas, access to water services is important, while, in urban areas, diseases spread quickly and

there is a need for services focused on sanitation and hygiene.

1. Challenges

Challenges in this sector are dominated by issues of sustainability. As Plummer and Slaymaker(2007) point out, technical issues with water delivery have made advances and are largelystandardized. However, the degradation and lack of upkeep of infrastructure is the source ofmajor problems for both water and sanitation service delivery in fragile states (OECD 2008).


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The first challenge is that communities must be able to maintain built systems on theirown. Donors are adept at building water and sanitation infrastructure, but once they withdraw,local communities may not have the ability to maintain the new systems. The use of appropriatetechnologies is therefore particularly important in this sector. In addition, often the breakdown ofa small component of the system may halt supply. Because of the need to ensure sustainability

of systems, short funding cycles pose a particular problem in this sector (Welle 2008).

Another feature of the maintenance issue is the need to identify which actors will beresponsible for maintaining the system. AusAID found that many of their water projects were notsustainable in the longer run because of a mismatch in capacity building (Buhl-Nielson 2009).While the technologies introduced in AusAID were simple, robust, and affordable, uptake waslimited because while NGOs implemented systems, it was the government which was heldresponsible when systems failed.

Challenges of service delivery in this sector are amplified in conflict situations sincewater and sanitation services are often targeted. Once national systems have broken down,community or private providers often take over which can resulted in fragmented operating

standards (Carlson et al. 2005). Beyond this, once assistance begins, design procedures maybe dispensed with in favor of meeting urgent needs. An ADB emergency water systemrehabilitation project in Timor-Leste fixed systems that had been inadequate in the first place,which then quickly broke down.


In response to the recognition that community involvement is critical for the success of waterand sanitation systems, demand responsive approaches (DRAs) have become the mostcommon method of service delivery. In a DRA, end users are involved in designing andfinancing water projects in an explicit turn away from supply-based approaches where waterpoints are established without community consultation. DRAs emphasize community level

governance and maintenance, which has made this approach particularly popular wheregovernments are very weak or conflict has not died down (Slaymaker, Christiansen, andHemming 2005).

One controversial trend has been to engage private providers in service delivery forwater and sanitation (W&S). While the appropriateness of private provision of W&S services hasbeen contested (Davis 2005), innovative approaches have seen some success. DFID hasintroduced the Sustainable Services Through Domestic Private Sector Participation Initiative(SS-DPSPI). There are 16 countries that currently have SS-DPSPI programs: Bangladesh,Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger,Peru, the Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, and Uganda. The idea behind this model is that whenthe government is unable, private providers can be engaged to enable continued service

delivery to underserved populations.

In sanitation, many innovations are technicalsuch as inventing toilets that are cheap,simple, and scalable. However, there are two trends in service delivery that are seeingincreasing success. The first comes out of the Orangi Pilot Project that started in Pakistan in the1980s. Its focus was on integrating communities with the upgrading of infrastructure. Sewerprojects are designed and maintained by communities, while the state provides the main sewerpipes to remove waste.


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A second innovation addresses the need to include behavioural changes along withservice provision. The Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS)10 approach originated in a projectin Bangladesh and is now a strategy advocated by the Water and Sanitation Program, an

African interest group formed to make progress towards the MDGs related to this area. CLTSfights the issue of open defecation and was conceived to respond to the fact that simply

providing toilets did not result in their use (see e.g., Hanchett et al. 2011). This programpromotes behavioral change that is designed in consultation with communities. This iseffectively a rural strategy but has recently seen some redesign for use in urban areas. AusAidfor example, began CLTS as a pilot project in urban and peri-urban areas, and it has now beenfully adopted by the government (Buhl-Neilson 2009).

3. Linking with Development

Functioning water and sanitation systems have development impacts through both the healthand the infrastructure channel. In a recent multi-country study, Gunther and Fink (2010) find thatdepending on the technology and country, W&S infrastructure lowers child diarrhea by 7%17%, and lowers under-5 child mortality by 5%20%. There are also important links to

education and gender. Functioning water systems increase productive activity through improvednutrient uptake, they can empower women and improve school attendance.

Because of the need to engage community groups, water initiatives seem as importantfor social cohesion that can contribute to peace building. In addition, a study on the politicaleconomy of sanitation found decentralized governance of sanitation can create the incentivesfor pro-poor investment (WSP 2011). In terms of infrastructure, W&S interventions can haveimpacts beyond simply providing the service. Even if a system becomes disabled, if it has beenproperly mapped can be rebuilt. It can also boost agricultural productivity.

OECD (2006) points out that while it is clear that there are development links fromimproved water and sanitation services, there is a lack of tools for political analysis of this

sector. Related to this, AusAID found that while poverty alleviation was a specific goal, therewas little poverty analysis and some factors (including how the districts were chosen) couldhave excluded the poor (Buhl-Neilson 2009).

C. Education

The provision of educational services has the potential to be one of the most transformativeinterventions in fragile states. This is because this sector is more likely than others to havespillovers that limit the impact of sources of fragility (OECD, 2008). It can confer normalcy,security, targeting for health and nutrition assistance. Education delivery can be a much neededtangible and immediate illustration in a post conflict situation that improvements are coming(UNESCO, 2011). In addition, the returns to education can be very high. According to AusAid

(2006), investments in womens and girls education and health yield some of the highestreturns of all development investments.

Yet, in 2007, conflict-affected and fragile states were responsible for more than half theworld-wide population of out-of-school children (Dolan and Perry, 2007). It stands apart fromother sectors considered in this paper because it is not included in humanitarian aid responses.That is, it is not considered to be a necessary feature of emergency response. In a recent

10http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/


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report, UNESCO (2011) points out that even while educational infrastructure is often damagedin conflict situations it is almost never counted in damage assessments.

1. Challenges

Education delivery has proven to be so problematic that in 2005, Save the Children launched aninternational campaign to bring awareness to the challenges of service provision in education infragile states. Yet this acknowledgement has not, as Dom (2009) points out, translated into highlevels of support for education. While fragile states are the source of half of the world's out-of-school population, they receive only one-fifth of total education aid (Dolan and Perry 2007).

Figure 5: 84% of Fragile States off-track to Achieve the MDG of Universal Primary Education

Source: Adapted from Dom (2009) table B3.

The first challenge is that educational services are easily polarized. If this occurs, theclassroom can become an incubator for class tensions, a venue for intolerance and a breedingground for violence (UNESCO 2011). Polarization is not just a feature of curriculum, but can befomented by excluding different ethnic or regional groups or girls.

A second challenge is the trajectory of assistance. Unlike other sectors, educationprojects are not generally a part of humanitarian assistance, so there is no opportunity for atransition to development aid. This is an important problem since many fragile states become

caught between short term humanitarian aid and longer term development aid. This is an issuethat must be dealt with at the donor level, as the OECDDAC (2010) points out that mostdonors continue to separate these two types of assistance in a way that shortchangeseducation.

A third challenge is the need to engage government in the provision of education, or atleast to design programs that can be transferred to the government once they are completed.Many initial efforts begin at the community level, however scaling up innovative community levelapproaches has proven to be difficult in post-conflict environments. Carlson et al. (2005) note

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

achieved on track off track seriously off track

fragile

non-FS


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that fragile states often cannot sustain donor education initiatives since they do not haveownership.

A fourth challenge is the need to also include a focus on the quality of education. Visiblereforms, such as the abolition of school fees, can be accomplished quickly. But less visible

reforms, such as improving the quality of education, require just as much attention. Studieshave shown that the patterns of school abandonment in fragile situations are often not simplybecause of fees, but based on illness, the need to look for food, the need to care for siblings,and social stigma (Sempere 2009).


As education has increasingly been moved up the international agenda, donors have beenintroducing education interventions earlier in the assistance process and consequently in lessstable environments. The result is that trends in education service delivery are primarilyprogram innovations in particularly difficult environments.

The first set of innovations is aimed at countries where the state is unable or unwilling toprovide educational services to the entire population. These innovations seek to engage NGOsto provide services while at the same time increasing the capacity of the central state to takeover that role. In Nepal, at a time when only about 10% of the country was under governmentcontrol, ADB used a modified sectorwide approach to improve enrollment. This included supportfor assessment and strategy development that substantially reduced the government'sworkload in managingsystems and meeting different reporting requirements. The gains inenrollment and teacher training have been modest, but show that it is possible to delivereducation services even in the midst of conflict (Berry 2009).

A related strategy is what Rose and Greeley (2006) call a system of shadow alignment.In this scenario, provision is started at the community or NGO level, but structures are built in

such a way that the state can inherit it once it is able. This was used in the Child-friendlyCommunity Initiative (CFCI) used by UNICEF in Sudan. It was a community-driven approachwhich increased capacity from the bottomup (Moreno-Torres 2005).

The second type of innovation target situations where formal schools are not accessibleto the population either because children are required to work, populations are nomadic, or thesituation is not safe for children to regularly attend school. In Somalia, a compressed learningapproach has been successfully piloted to enable learning in Somaliland where enrollment ratesare among the worlds lowest. Smith (2007) describes innovations that included a condensedcurriculum and flexible timing models. Compressed learning is not a new instrument, butpreviously had been used more commonly for older children or adults whose education hadbeen interrupted

The third innovation seeks to address enrollment in situations where education is nottrusted by the population often because of volatile political situations. In Nepal, education hadbeen used as a propaganda tool and therefore the provision of services by NGOs were viewedwith suspicion (Rose and Greeley 2006). At the time there was a divide between governmentand Maoists. Save the Children was able to provide services by gathering data and presentingcommunity leaders with the tools to demand education. This brought the rebels and communityleaders together. This is in line with the model advocated by some of accountability from below,which closely integrates beneficiaries with providers.


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Efforts are also moving forward to reform international financing for education in fragilestates. In the general case, the Education for All Fast Track Initiative (FTI) was created in 2002to attempt to coordinate and target donor funding for education, and thereby increase theavailability of aid. But it is not specific to fragile states and evidence suggests that fragile stateshave difficulty in meeting some for the requirements such as a national educational plan, which

results in their low representation. The recent creation of the Education Transition Fund isintended to help fragile states move towards the Education for All (EFA) initiative goals.


Economists have proposed many channels through which education should affect economicgrowth, innovation, peace, and health outcomes and we will discuss these below. However it isimportant to note that the empirical evidence that education has such outcomes is limited. Thereason is that it is extremely difficult to isolate the impact of schooling on outcomes that areoutcomes of the learning process.

First, education is a powerful agent of intergenerational change. It does this through the

socialization of youth. In addition, the establishment of a neutral space for learning can itselfhave important impacts. Vaux and Visman (2005) suggest that it can also protect them frombeing recruited into inappropriate activities such as prostitution, forced labor, trafficking, etc.OECD (2008) produces evidence that each additional year of education of the school agepopulation reduces the risk of conflict by about 20%. Employment growth and education arealso effective ways of dealing with the youth bulge.

Second, educational spaces can serve alternative functions simultaneously. Theestablishment of working schools can also serve as a base for other forms of assistance suchas healthcare and food delivery. OECD (2008) points out that it can also be used to targetchildren for other interventions such as malnutrition or violence prevention. In addition, it canhelp donors to identify sources of social tensions and address them through curriculum

development.

A more educated population can also improve resilience to shocks. Paul and Routray(2009) for example, show that the in a flood-prone region of Bangladesh, those households withmore education were better able to understand and use flood-forecasting information andtherefore reduce vulnerability from flooding.

Finally, the provision of education has a strong link to building state legitimacy. Save theChildren points out that the inclusion of education in a post-conflict development plan indicatesthe government's willingness to be held accountable for its promises (Wedge 2008).

D. Security and Justice

Security and Justice (S&J) is a constitutive element of a functioning state. Without order, noother public goods can be delivered. Despite the recognition of its importance, most donorseither report modest spending or are prohibited from participating in this sector.11 Yet in fragilestates, overall governance depends in no small part on improvements in this sector (Ball 2005).Unlike the other sectors examined in this study, donor involvement in service delivery in S&J isprimarily indirect and is affected through strengthening domestic processes and reform.

11This appears to be the case for multilateral development banks for example (Hammergren 2008).


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Violence and conflict are a particularly widespread and intractable problem in fragilestates. While the number of countries experiencing conflict has decreased over time, existingconflicts are becoming more entrenched. This is particularly true of fragile states which are ofteninvolved in repeated cycles of conflict (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: Most Conflict Today in States that Have Experienced Previous Conflict

Decade Violence Onsets in Countries withno Previous Conflict (%)

Violence Onsets in Countries witha Previous Conflict (%)

Total Number ofOnsets

1960s 57 43 351970s 43 57 441980s 38 62 391990s 33 67 812000s 10 90 39

Source: World Bank, 2011

Similar to the case of education, simply building a security infrastructure may havenegative impacts since it is easily politicized. While it is critical that security forces are linked tothe state and do not operate independently, this does not preclude corruption and brutality orguarantee that police and military forces will be seen as a source of stability and justice.

1. Challenges

Service delivery in the security sector cannot be advanced without the cooperation of the state.Yet, the state often uses S&J as a tool for oppression or violence. Thus donors face thechallenge of both increasing confidence in the state and at the same time promoting security forall while being aware that it cannot sustainably be provided outside of the state.

The first major challenge in this sector is finding legitimate entry points. The World Banksuggests that anticorruption efforts can be an effective way to achieve visible early results whichcan then be transferred into sustained activity (World Bank 2011). But once a donor has enteredthe sector, there is often a closing window of legitimacy. In Afghanistan, a BMZ evaluation findsthat in a period of only 2 years, the perception of foreign security forces as helpful declined by20% (Bohnke, Koehler, and Zurcher 2010).

Another challenge is the need to build confidence. Because S&J can only sustainably beprovided by the state, projects must concurrently provide security and build up state legitimacy.World Bank (2011) suggests that there is a high degree of commonality among countries in themeasures that inspire confidence. These include transparency and the removal of measuresthat are perceived to be particularly unfair or corrupt (e.g., legislation or the presence of

soldiers).

The third challenge is the need to understand and incorporate the domestic context.While understanding the country context is important for the success of most services, OECD(2007) argues that in the case of security context trumps everything. One example of thedifficulty donors face comes from the fact that in fragile states, customary systems may be thedominant form of justice and security.12In Sudan, DFIDs interventions resulted in the rise of a

12OECD (2007) suggests that 80% of people in fragile states rely on non-state actors for these services.


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dual system of customary and formal courts. This unexpected result led to the slowing of fundsdisbursement as DFID did not have sufficient experience with this model (Foster et al. 2010).

There is little consensus about the objectives or modalities of working with this sector.Hammergren (2008) has characterized the consensus problem as being over whether the goal

is to create a set of institutions to resolve questions about the law, or if it is to empower thepoor. This has led to increasing calls for better understanding of this sector. Yet even under thisuncertainty, assistance is pushes ahead. For example, UN peacekeeping expenditures havealmost tripled (OECD 2009) and the World Banks latest World Development Reportrecommends major shifts in funding priorities in fragile states, urging an increased focus onsupporting effective, legitimate police forces, and justice systems.


Innovations in security often seek to build coalitions across sectors and actors. This isnecessary both to maintain legitimacy but also because progress in S&J is often intertwined withprogress in other areas. Sherman (2010) points out, for example, that overcrowding in prisons is

often not just a symptom of the need for new prison facilities, but rather is indicative of problemsin other areas. Foster et al. (2010) detail one approach used in Southern Sudan calledCommunity Security and Arms Control (CSAC) where DFID joined forces with other donors tocombine recovery, conflict-resolution and small arms control. This multi-institutional approachallowed donors to recognize the interdependence of different problems.

The World Bank suggests that coalitions should be inclusive enough to make progressand represent most of society (World Bank 2011). Increasingly donors are looking to SouthSouth or regional approaches to issues of S&J. This is not only because there is a great deal ofregional spillover from violence and conflict, but also because regional bodies may be seen asmore legitimate in their involvement than other foreign donors . The African Union for example,has been involved in regional peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities.

Increasingly, justice assistance seeks to incorporate traditional or customary systems ofjustice alongside modern state-run institutions. There are two reasons for this. The first is thatthe topdown approach of overhauling or creating formal justice systems is a slow process andmay not, in the end, increase access. By contrast, customary systems have the potential toprovide rapid and culturally-acceptable solutions that are accessible and affordable (Wojkowska2006). The second reason is that as Pimentel (2010) points out, these systems are often highlyfunctional, even in post-conflict situations. In Southern Sudan for example, 95% of peopleaccess security services through non-state mechanisms. 13 Chirayeth, Sage, and Woolcock(2005) suggest that it may be more useful to engage and understand customary law than toignore it. The World Bank's Justice for the Poor (J4P) program attempts to engage at this levelby supporting pro-poor approaches to justice reform.

However, even as donors recognize the benefits of customary law structures, at leastDFID has noted that it has struggled to incorporate customary justice courts in its programming(Chapman and Vaillant 2010). This is despite their articulated efforts to engage at the interfaceof the state and society. And often, traditional systems are not ideal in that they are oftenopaque, do not conform to international conceptions of justice, may be subject to powerimbalances, are unsuitable for all types of adjudication, and treat different groups unequally(Wojkowska 2006).

13http://www.ssrnetwork.net/documents/Events/security_justice_141207/Supporting%20state%20and%20non-state%20security%20and%20justice.pdf


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Development links are difficult to build when, for example, different agencies of the governmenthave different ideas about the purpose of foreign S&J engagement as was the case in

Afghanistan. Another potential pitfall is exemplified by US assistance to Yemen. Assistance was

scaled up rapidly, from a few million before 2001 to a proposed 1.2 billion over the next 6 years.Yet this assistance focused on automatic weapons, coastal patrol boats, transport planes,helicopters, and logistics advisors. A senior US counterterrorism official pointed out that whilethis may limit terrorist acts, a long term solution needs credible institutions for economic andsocial progress (Sanok 2011).

VI. CONCLUSIONS

This study used program evaluations to understand the difficulties and successes that arecommon in engaging with fragile states. By embedding these experiences in the existingacademic literature on fragile states we also sought to highlight the ways in which service

delivery in fragile states can contribute to econ

operationalizing experience: donor approaches to service delivery in fragile states

Documents